Irish women’s basketball team refused to shake hands with Israel
Irish women’s basketball team refused to shake hands with Israel
Ireland’s women’s basketball team refused to shake hands with their Israeli opponents on Thursday, amid outrage over accusations of antisemitism
You're viewing a single thread.
Irish solidarity with the Palestinian cause has been massive for decades.
That's almost certainly what the Israeli player was referring to with this malicious mischaracterization:
It’s known that they are quite antisemitic and it’s no secret, and maybe that’s why a strong game is expected
Something about being brutalized and treated as second class citizens in your own home by a militarily dominant power seems to generate empathy for the plight of Palestinians.
That makes a lot of sense. I didn’t know Ireland had such strong solidarity with Palestine. I remember a story way back when the potato famine was happening and Ireland sent what little they could to the native Americans. Same story there. An oppressed people in their own homeland by a dominant military power.
And Native Americans. In 1847, during the Irish potato famine, the Choctaw Nation (fresh off being forcibly moved to Oklahoma and suffering themselves) made a donation to the Irish. Later, the Irish people realized what an amazing act of generosity that was in context and there’s now a special bond between Ireland and the Choctaw Nation.
lol did I have it the other way around. Still a cool gesture becuase both parties were pretty bad off.
Frederick Douglass met with Daniel O’Connell in Ireland in 1845. Several other abolitionists travelled there as well.
Potato famine is a misnomer because they were producing more than enough food the whole time, but the British cared more about taxes and landlord rights than whether the people were starving.
I did not know that. But at the same time, I’m not surprised.
I'm no linguist, but aren't Palestinian people also under the umbrella of Semites? Like, by definition?
Antisemitism is understood to mean prejudice against Jews.
Semitic languages is the formal name for the branch of the Afroasiatic language family that includes modern Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic and ancient languages like Akkadian and Phoenician.
Semitic people isn't a term that anyone uses for real, but if they did it would refer to peoples who have traditionally spoke semitic languages.
It's frustrating that the term antisemitism refers to prejudice against only a specific subset of the peoples who would fall under the semitic label. But deliberately misunderstanding the term antisemitism is also quite frustrating.
But deliberately misunderstanding the term antisemitism is also quite frustrating.
Given how the term is broadly understood in modern usage, I wouldn't say the players are misunderstanding it; I think it's more a question of misidentifying where the pushback is actually coming from.
And I am sympathetic, given all the reasons both modern and historical that might make it easy to infer antisemitism. But starting there shuts out any possibility for nuance or discussion or learning.
What frustrates me is how hard it is to get people out of that mindset - of taking things other people are communicating and adding one's own assumptions on where they're coming from. You have to be able to recognize how your behavior is limiting your ability to empathize and grow, and that kind of change can be so challenging.
It feels like an uphill battle, but positive change doesn't happen overnight.
I wouldn't say the players are misunderstanding it
No, neither would I.
The people who are deliberately misunderstanding the term antisemitism are those who pretend they don't know that it means hatred towards jews by quibbling about the 'semite' part of the word. That whole comment was just about definitions of relevant terms, per the comment it was a reply to.
The israeli players are maliciously mischaracterising support for the palestinian cause as antisemitism. As a jew who frequently does not support the actions of the state of israel, this is a phenomenon I'm personally acquainted with and have quite strong feelings about.
I think the thing with the word "antisemitism" is that it has been so thoroughly associated with nazis that it has become a weapon in itself. People wrestle over what it means because most people internalized "antisemites are bad". If you can get "antisemite" associated with your enemy, you win.
It shouldn't be a thing really. In a good faith conversation not between linguists, people should just clarify what they mean.
I just can't agree with this line of reasoning. It's so close to all the violent white supremacists who whine about how unfair and damaging it is to be called racist.
Hatred against jews has uniquely strong roots in western cultures that merits a specific term - every right wing conspiracy theory is still just reheated blood libel and protocols of the elders of zion. It's deserving of a powerfully negative term.
If your opponent in an argument is antisemitic, you should win. Of course, anti-zionism is not antisemitism and criticism of the state of israel is not antisemitism.
Misuse of the term is something to be challenged through discourse, rather than scrapping the term, I think.
Oh, you are misunderstanding me. Antisemitism is a fine word in itself, what I'm arguing against is not the word antisemite itself. I am arguing against the pointless arguments over what the word means, the "what you really mean" or the "you are using the wrong word because technically it shouldn't mean what people use it for" arguments.
And I also think it's an okay argument to have, if society really has long-held conflicting beliefs over what a word means. Like the word "socialist". It makes sense to argue over what that means. But trying to redefine "antisemite" as someone who hates Jews and Arabs as well is stupid, since in usage it was specifically used for people hating Jews.
Ah! My apologies.
the “you are using the wrong word because technically it shouldn’t mean what people use it for” arguments
Yep, totally agree. It seems like irrelevant trolling at best.
They are indeed. But Palestinians are brown, so they don't count.
We know that brown people don't count because of how Israel has treated Ethiopian Jews.
The constant self-pity from Israelis is so fucking annoying